Originally Posted by
Eric Stratton
so would you do away with the minimum wage then too?
management maynot be cruel but most have lost their ethics. they now see employee paycuts/work rules as a way to increase productivity while believeing that they shouldn't have to take paycuts as well but actually believe they should get a pay raise because they increased productivity by reducing labor costs. a little bit of a double standard in my mind. this is the philosophy from a general mills contract negotiator that that I know.
so how do you feel about your old CEO taking an increase in his retirement package right before CAL asked it's employees for paycuts. free market society or is it bullsheet.
The only way I would support a minimum wage is if it were at least $500,000 per year. That's ridiculous I know; but no more ridiculous than the principle behind minimum wage legislation. When the cost of an employee is more than the employee is able to produce for the employer he becomes a liability and it makes no sense for him to be employed at the firm. You cannot make a person worth an arbitrary amount by passing a law against offering him less. The only result is you deprive that person of the right to earn the amount that his capabilties and situation would permit.
No argument from me that many Corporate bosses have lost their ethics. Some were never taught in the first place. ala Skilling and the whole Enron crew.
If you are refering to Bethune I don't feel anything. The Board of Directors made that decision. They run the company and if the stockholders, at least the ones that have a vote on such matters, buy off on it so be it. I am not saying you have to like it, but no one has a gun to their head forcing them to work there. They are free to leave. So I guess it is free market capitalism. It may not always be pretty but it is the most moral social system ever devised by man and I fully support it.
There have been a couple of people on this site who have suggested a reading list. Well I have a couple of suggestions for those who dare to pick up the gauntlet and meet the challenge to jettison, or at least call into question all the statist thinking that goes on here:
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal".